Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi’s most trusted aide is BJP President Mr. Amit Shah. The responsibility for decisions taken in the party rests with Mr. Shah. It may be assumed Mr. Shah’s decisions are approved by Mr. Modi. However in the formal sense Mr. Shah is accountable. This writer believes that his decisions are harming the Prime Minister’s long term prospects and agenda. If this is being done with Mr. Modi’s approval the PM is scoring a self-goal.

The BJP may congratulate itself for successfully installing Mr. Laxmikant Parsekar as the new Goa Chief Minister and of curbing the dissent of Deputy Chief Minister Mr. Francis D’Souza. The latter appears foolish by continuing in office after his talk of quitting the cabinet if forced to serve under a junior. But BJP leaders do not mind appearing foolish. They rarely display self respect. They delude themselves with the belief that blind obedience to authority reflects discipline. Whether the 30 percent Catholic community of Goa which helped the BJP for the first time to form its government in the state remains equally compliant will be known in the future. However the message across the nation by the BJP decision in Goa is loud and clear. The BJP seeks a Hindu Chief Minister in Kashmir. It cannot tolerate a Christian Chief Minister in Goa.

In Kashmir there is certainly need for revising tradition. The Valley has barely more legislators than in Ladakh and Jammu combined. Yet the Chief Minister invariably is from the Valley. The solution is of course for the state to be divided into three parts which have different cultural, ethnic and linguistic characteristics. Instead the BJP obsessed with propagating its myopic vision of Hinduism is aspiring to create a Hindu Chief Minister.

Regardless of what happens in Goa and Kashmir it can safely be said that the long term impact of the decision to block a Goa Christian Chief Minister could have serious electoral repercussions. The BJP strategy by now is crystal clear. It is to create a wholly Hindu nation along the lines advocated by RSS Chief Mr. Mohan Bhagwat. Ironically Mr. Bhagwat’s view of Hinduism is unexceptionable if taken to suggest that all people in India partake of the Hindu way of life. In other words, as this writer has repeatedly urged, all people in India should be described by their correct nomenclature which is Hindustani. But Mr. Bhagwat insists on describing them as Hindus. For Hindus it is insulting to suggest that Christians and Muslims in India are also Hindus, implying thereby that the Hindu community has no religious identity.

The RSS and the BJP are free to pursue their goal of creating a so-called Hindu India. They believe that it is also helping them win elections. Without judging the goodness or badness of their decision this writer believes that its pursuit will in the long term prove losable and not winnable. The future will prove who is right, the RSS or this writer.